Monitoring equipment such as network “sniffers”, protocol analyzers, intrusion detection systems, network forensics systems, or other network analysis systems can be connected to data networks to monitor for intrusion, hackers, or other types of network problems. By connecting such equipment to a network, however, there is a danger that the security of the monitoring equipment itself can become compromised. In other words, there is a danger that a hacker could detect the existence of the monitoring equipment and jam or otherwise control or disrupt the operation of that equipment.